With 100+ degree heat and a general lack of enthusiasm, I decided to stay home for the September VHF Contest. The contest was slow, as usual, but fortunately a couple of rovers made my day — even adding a couple of new 70 cm grids to my logbook.

VHF Contest Gear Updates — Home Station Setup

One reason I’m staying home is that I’ve added a Tokyo Hy-Power HL-250 Udx amplifier to the station. It’s rated at 250 watts on 432 MHz. I also added a Down East Microwave HPLNA at the mast, along with an LMR-600 coax run. Plus, I have an M2 18-element Yagi on the mast. All of this has motivated me to collect grids on that band.

I set up the Icom IC-9100 for 432 MHz, the IC-746pro for 144 MHz, and the IC-7100 for 50 MHz. I also used two computers connected to the same logbook on Dropbox, N3FJP’s VHF Contest Log.

I normally use the IC-7100 for portable operations, barefoot for Single Op Portable contests, and with an amp for rare grid roving. I use a Tokyo Hy-Power HL-166V at about 150 watts. That worked for this contest instead of my usual shack M2 1K2 amplifier. I figured the extra power wouldn’t really help with the typical one-and-done signals during this contest.

VHF Contest Results

As usual, the first hour and the first day are the most active. On Saturday, there were 27 QSOs and 13 grids on both 6 and 2 meters, plus 11 QSOs and 8 grids on 70 cm, for a score of 2,550. Not too bad. On Sunday, I added quite a few more QSOs and grids, but by about 2 PM everything was really quiet.

That’s usually when I pack up my portable operations and head home. This time, I hung in there and focused on working a couple of rovers as they made their rounds. That was W5OC/R, who provided an excellent schedule I followed religiously, and N5AC/R. Between them, they added 35 QSOs to my log!

My final raw score was 9,861, with 146 contacts and 57 multipliers. The breakdown: 50 MHz 58/22, 144 MHz 61/22, and 432 MHz 27/13.

VHF Contest Problem Solving

With portable and rover operations, I’m always finding lots of challenges and problems to solve. Usually, at my home station, I’ve already solved those challenges. But I did run into logging issues with sharing the log between two computers. It worked fine on Friday, but by Saturday the gremlins arrived. I solved that after the first hour of the contest.

I also ran into a significant issue with the IC-746pro. It would shut down during transmit and then power back up. I tried several solutions, including moving 144 MHz operations to the IC-9100. On Sunday, I added handfuls of ferrites to the DC power cable and the USB interface. That helped a great deal, but it still dropped out at times. That’s something to take up this week.

I hope you had fun during the contest. Thanks for your QSOs!